


In the Androgynous Dark

by momomasoch



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, F/F, Forced Crossdressing, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Menstruation, Power Dynamics, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicide Attempt, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28078731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momomasoch/pseuds/momomasoch
Summary: It must have been a mistake. Mickey was too young to be paired, and certainly not with her teacher. Then an official letter arrived, and there was no question about it.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Whittaker Fielding/Mickey Brideman
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	In the Androgynous Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in a society of all female people. At birth, half are assigned to be “boys”, are referred to as “he/him”, and are raised as males; half are assigned to be “girls” and are treated according to traditional heteronormative roles. “Boys” are fed testosterone pills, bind their breasts, and have their vaginal opening sewn almost entirely shut, allowing for only menstruation, with the clitoris and the urethra intact. “Girls” are to be homemakers, and receive little education. A “boy” and a “girl” are paired together as a “family”, and must ensure population growth by artificial insemination with sperm preserved from extinct males. 
> 
> All of the characters are cisgender. Whittaker is 49, Mickey is 15.

“Have you been assigned to a 'family' yet?” The question came over dark coffee, spoons heaped with clotted cream, windowpanes growing opaque with plumes of steam and puffs of warm breath. Whit wore a herringbone suit, cloud-colored wool with bits of color caught between threads, a crisp-collared shirt, a silk tie—formal for everything, even a simple morning. He was approaching fifty too quickly for his liking, bone-thin and very tall, his breasts beginning to sag from loosening elasticity, his rather square chin slightly bristled despite having shaved that morning, broom-colored hair bundled back behind broad shoulders. He was an exemplary ‘man’—he fulfilled the role he was given with ease, since youth, since infancy, when the vagina was sewn shut.

His guest, accepting the beverage with cold hands, wore thick knob-knitted sweaters, three at once, and an ill-fitting hat which flopped down over the low forehead, flu-reddened cheeks and a raw-rubbed nose. “No. Have you?” Mickey combed anxious fingers through her strawberryish nest of hair, curls between gold and scarlet, with pockmarks blotched across her nose, a thick pair of spectacles sloping down the bridge. “I mean—were you? At my age—” More than twice his junior. The gleaming badge of a school crest sat at her flat chest—not because of binding, as in Whit’s case, but simply the whims of puberty, although there were times when she was almost convinced by her schoolmates to fill her brassiere with crumpled tissues. Not chubby—but with short limbs, and still with the childish pounds of infant fat.

As neighbors, Mickey stayed in a little cream-colored pot of a home, as stout and gleaming bright as fresh whipping cream, and a brick chimney perched precariously at the top: a cherry plopped atop a slice of shortcake. But with the years, the house had grown tired and stained, with tea leaves and mud, and knotted bits of trampled grass replacing the front garden, the fruit trees producing only shriveled, hard lemons and bitter peaches—more seed than flesh. They were inedible, but she took them to Sunday markets anyway, a street of gathering girls selling home-grown vegetables and antiques from their attics. It had become habit to visit Whit every day, whose house was concrete and minimal, the very opposite of her over-stuffed quarters, squashed to the rafters with button-eyed pets and half-finished quilts and bric-a-brac.

Whit took a contemplative swallow of coffee, remarking in exchange to such frantic questions: “—Once.”

“I wish I could be paired with you.” The girl complained, her round features crinkling together at the first sip of bitter dregs.

“I’m old enough to be your father.” Whit humored her. “And you’re not matured yet—you have a few years to fuss and worry, about something you can’t choose anyway. —Have a biscuit, did you miss breakfast again?” Without waiting, he snatched the flaky pastry from his own plate, warm with butter and speckled with pepper, and pushed it into Mickey’s protesting mouth.

“But you’re my _teacher_ , and you always give me good marks—if anyone, I would want someone I’m close to, to be my husband—"

“Chew carefully.” He scolded, refusing to listen to the chatter which she chirped about his kitchen, as if the warbling of impatient robins. “Ten times until you swallow.”

“You have chalk on your hands, Whit—” She mumbled, through a mouthful of dough. “ _Ouch_ , you really did add too much pepper, it hurts my tongue—" She struggled to gulp.

“That’s _Mr. Fielding_.” He corrected, sternly.

“The other children call you Whitty Whitty Whittaker—” She grabbed for another biscuit, but merely suckled at the glossy glaze of crackled sugar atop it.

He pinched her hand, hard between the fingers, until she dropped it with a cry. “I don’t invite brats to breakfast.”

She whined and whimpered, and examined the imprint of his nails.

* * *

Sterling sat adjacent to Mickey in mathematics class, his mouth leaking spittle as he day-dreamed, a cheek propped up by the palm of his hand. He was the same age, or within the same month, and he had a rather difficult time of boyishness—infections from the sewing were not terribly uncommon, but mastectomies were; most mothers opted for their ‘sons’ to simply wrap their torsos, until entirely straight, without lumps. Sterling was a boy of spring, pink ruddy cheeks and a nose which was always dripping: because of pollen allergies, even in the winter, his gingerbread-bright hair trimmed closely to his head—his ears bore bandages of paper and sticky adhesive, from clumsily cutting it himself.

Mickey dutifully copied down formulas upon soft milk-colored paper, with the graphite point of a blunt pencil. Between equations, she scribbled notes, secret letters meant only for Whit. He had chastised her for such dalliances before, and she could feel the weight of his powdered hand against her slouching shoulder, straightening her posture. Standing over her desk, almost ghoulishly, he glowered downwards, a thin pair of tiny wire-framed glasses held up to his honey-hued gaze—she cooed that it made him look academic, and that was the point—and the wooden length of a ruler, twelve severe inches, slapped at her fingers.

Her howl awoke Sterling.

Whit carried on, the olive chalkboard screeching with each letter he wrote.

* * *

Mickey’s favorite pair of flour-pale underwear was splotched with jammy stains, as she gazed downwards in dismay, tucked in the cramped stall of the school bathroom, slipping the bit of cloth down her stick-straight legs to wash them in the sink, the water turning scarlet.

“Menstruation.” Whit explained crisply to her, when she came crying to him after classes had adjourned, patiently wiping her phlegm-damp nostrils and bitter tears. “But anatomical classes should have begun already—well, you’ll get your wish granted; you’ll be assigned very soon, I expect—”

“I don’t like it at all—my tum hurts and I’m leaking!” Mickey complained, clutching at her stomach.

“—That’s what the napkin is for.” After rummaging in the square of his private bathroom, he handed her a package of them: cotton-stuffed sanitary napkins. “You can buy these at any corner store, I’ll give you the money for it. Just wear one each day until the bleeding stops. Apply it just how I showed you.”

“Why?” A multitude of different answers and interpretations: why the futile discarding of monthly tissue, why such inconveniences, twelve times a year.

“—To have children.”

“I would rather visit the hospital, to have the same operation as you!” But she managed not to stamp her feet, rather, flopping upon the settee, leather and unforgiving, crossing one knee over its sister.

“No, you don’t.” Whit said darkly, and his expression was so dour, that Mickey stopped her hysterics at once.

* * *

A week afterwards, a letter arrived, and Whit carded it repeatedly through his long fingers: ivory paper, with ceremonial stampings in the corners: ruby insignias, dark navy ink, the emerald numerals and symbols blotted so deeply that his hands were smeared with color. Mickey would receive an identical one, too, in her crooked mailbox, if she ever bothered to open that iron mouth, an ugly surprise waiting. He wanted to feed it to the fire—but another would replace it the following day. It must have been a mistake—why not Sterling or Avery or any other average-aged child, as opposed to him—practically elderly, half of his life finished.

What was he going to tell Mickey? He reached for the familiar bottle of pills upon his dining table—pastel little circles to be swallowed whole, one per day. It was that same medicine which weakened his heart, and allowed for musculature which had since withered from his college days, the sprouting of prickling hairs, the deepening of his voice.

With a generous pouring of caramel bourbon, he took them all.

* * *

The attempt had not worked—all the thwarted suicide earned him was a week in the hospital, vomiting out his stomach. The muddy-kneed neighbor girl visited, her ridiculous tortoise-framed glasses sitting crooked upon her ears, with a bouquet of flowers—he recognized them, picked from his own garden, her little fingers bearing bandages from nettles.

“I’ve been assigned!” She announced, with the first hint of excitement.

“—Oh? Who to?” He feigned dispassion, plucking here and there, trying to spruce up bedraggled petals from the clump of vegetation, wrapped in newspaper, some still dangling with their roots.

Her blushing told him everything, swinging her ankles from her chair—her teeth were overly large, crammed together into too small of a mouth, a few missing altogether, leaving gummy gaps to be replaced. Her bottom lip had a bloody mark in it, the flesh swollen and blossom-pink from a nervous habit of biting. She was not particularly early, in her periodical blood—rather, she was a bit late, and such arrangements for a 'family' often came years before. But Mickey did not know the reason behind such joinings, and Whit grimaced at the inevitable explanation.

“I gather you will be moving in; you practically live in my house, anyway. But don’t interpret this to mean I’ll be more generous with grading.” He said stiffly, frowning at the paper bracelet fastened around one wrist.

* * *

Circumstances returned almost to normalcy—except, instead of her time being limited to breakfasts and after lessons, Mickey was a permanent guest in the house, and she was intent on reducing his practical study to another playpen of candy wrappers and puppy-dogs stuffed with cotton and illustrated books. He had become more lenient in critiquing her homework—he was not trying to be an awful husband, after all. But it was still odd, having to hold her back for detention or paddle her bottom in the corner of the classroom for disobedience, when she would sob and snivel for the rest of the evening, once they arrived at home together.

And no consummation—Whit could not bring himself to. He was simply not attracted to her—his fondness was more fatherly, if not purely authorial—but he found himself watching her grasp greedily for the oven, with bare fingers foolishly reaching for the hot handle in hasty search for baked treats, on her flat toes, balancing precariously. He slapped her hands away, slipping quilted mittens on them, noting how the flour-dusted apron had begun straining at the front, the smallest swell of tender breasts—developing in new ways, too.

That is—until an official letter arrived, informing Whit of the matter of unpregnancy needing correction.

* * *

She could not hate him any more than he hated himself, propping her stocky legs upon his shoulders with a syringe plunged into the red pucker of her tiny irritated uterus. He depressed the plunger, guiding his thumb firmly downwards, until the pale contents were emptied. He tried to treat the whole unpleasant procedure as a doctor would, but he was not naturally nurturing—never one to fuss over scraped knees or kiss flimsy bandages.

“You—you—you—!” The proper insults escaped her, shrieking and kicking in a tantrum. He did not even chastise her when her shin banged against the bridge of his narrow nose.

“Yes, yes, yes.” He said frostily, merely pinching his bloodied nostrils between index finger and thumb.

* * *

In the morning, there came the demand, sulkily muttered over fluffy pancakes drenched in sticky syrup.

“I want a dibborce.” The proper word was divorce—but her throat was thick with mucus, her face sticky with snot-strings.

“No.” He said plainly, not glancing up from the series of badly botched assignments, half-hearted efforts turned in by half-minded pupils. “How do you even know that word? Were you reading history books again? I’m not the one who decided the timing of things. File a complaint with the government, if you want to whine.”

* * *

And a month afterwards, between bits of breakfast: burnt bricks of toast and soggy eggs with crunching fragments of pecked shell—neither of them were cooks—Mickey ecstatically informed Whit that, by some granted hope, the bloodying of her underwear had ceased entirely, no more smears of scarlet to be found. Leaning over the table, he kissed the curls at the crown of her head, and told her he had always wanted to be a father. He fetched an emerald candela cigar from a wooden box, tucked upon the highest shelf of the kitchen cabinet, and lit it with the burning head of a match.


End file.
